Film documents rescue of hundreds of endangered sea turtles

Saturday

Jul 8, 2017 at 7:00 AM

“Saving Sea Turtles: Preventing Extinction,” a new documentary at the Simons IMAX Theatre of the New England Aquarium, tells the dramatic story of what happened after 1,246 sea turtles became stranded on Cape Cod Bay beaches in Wellfleet and surrounding towns in November and December 2014.

By Jody Feinberg/The Patriot Ledger

It’s a rare and wonderful experience to save a wild animal from death. And it’s inspiring to see a film that documents the rescue efforts of hundreds of individuals in Quincy and on the Cape.

“Saving Sea Turtles: Preventing Extinction,” a new documentary at the Simons IMAX Theatre of the New England Aquarium, tells the dramatic story of what happened after 1,246 sea turtles became stranded on Cape Cod Bay beaches in Wellfleet and surrounding towns in November and December 2014. It’s a tale of committed people who are a model for how to promote wildlife survival in the face of natural and human calamities. As an audience, you cheer for the graceful, inquisitive looking turtles and the determined humans moved by them.

“When you pick up a turtle that doesn’t look alive and see its flippers start flapping and it raises its head almost to say ‘thank you,’ that’s a great feeling,” said volunteer rescuer Bill Allen.

During 2014, the number of stranded Kemp’s ridley sea turtles was extraordinary – 120 a season is more typical. Since these relatively small turtles are the most critically endangered sea turtle species, the rescuers had a heightened urgency.

While it’s unknown why so many turtles beached in 2014, it is known that they are endangered by oil spills, pollution, entanglement in fishing gear, and poaching, according to narrator and renown oceanographer Sylvia Earle.

When Kemp’s ridley sea turtles were discovered in 1947, there were 220,000 nests. That population plummeted, then began to grow thanks to co-operative conservation efforts between Mexico and the United States since 1978, and then had a major setback after the Deep Water Horizon oil spill in 2010.

“The central thing is to help these juvenile turtles survive so they eventually can breed,” Earle said.

After hatching on beaches in Mexico and Texas, the baby Kemp’s ridley turtles swim hours to reach the gulf waters. Normally, they stay in the Gulf of Mexico, but some get swept up in the Gulf Stream current that pushes them north. When they get caught in Cape Cod Bay, they become “cold-stunned” when the water temperature drops to 50 degrees.

In the film, Allen and other rescuers trained by the Mass Audubon Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary can be seen acting as a search party to scour the beaches. Dressed in hats, scarves and winter coats, they dug holes and covered the turtles with sea grass until Audubon staff could collect them. But as they discovered more and more turtles, they needed to transport them in their cars to the sanctuary, since staff could not collect the large number found each day.

As the film unfolds, there’s tension and drama, as people raced against time to save the turtles. Once triaged, tagged and identified at the sanctuary, the turtles were driven to New England Aquarium Animal Care Center in Quincy. Inside the center, filmmakers Michele Gomes and Jenny Ting showed professionals and volunteers working round-the-clock to treat the turtles. You can see scores of turtles, with a number written on their shell, weakly swimming in water tanks and held by staff, who evaluated their conditions, drew blood, took X-rays and cleaned infections and wounds.

After the Quincy center was at capacity, a massive multi-state, multi-agency collaborative effort began. Staff and volunteers packed 243 turtles into Chiquita Banana boxes and trucked them to Coast Guard and general aviation planes, which flew the turtles to 21 animal care centers in 10 states.

While about 400 turtles died, 730 were rehabilitated and became well enough to be released into the ocean, including one so severely wounded many would have given up on it. In the final scene, hundreds of people gathered in Jekyll Island in Georgia to watch staff and volunteers from the New England Aquarium Animal Care Center and the Georgia Sea Turtle Center carry turtles into the waves and let them go. As the turtles swam and then disappeared into the ocean, the crowd cheered.

“When you see this kind of passion and community, it’s hard not to feel hopeful,” said one rescue worker.

Jody Feinberg may be reached at jfeinberg@ledger.com or follow on Twitter @JodyF_Ledger.